Thursday, March 10, 2011

Is Homosexuality an Abomination?

By Maurice Lacunza(also published under the title "Christians bash gay people with the same Bible that forbids clam chowder, tattoos, and crippled people getting into your church"

This book is used to justify
all kinds of discrimination
and hateful behavior

I have been challenged with the question of whether or not homosexuality is against the Bible. Clearly not all Christians agree on this matter. It matters because if you are LGBT person, a homosexual, then therefore by some definitions, you are against the Bible and you are "wrong" because "the Bible says so" and after all, so say some, it is the "Word of God." Christians throw around that phrase loosely. So what does the Word say?

First, the book of Leviticus says that a man shall not lay with another man. There are many other things in Leviticus and they have traditionally been considered "as culturally not relevant to our time." Leviticus says, to name only a few, that the crippled and lame should not be allowed in the temple. The same book says that men should not shave their faces. It says that we should not wear diverse threads in our clothing. It says that men should not have tattoos.

The same chapter also forbids
lobster, tattoos and shaving
your beard. Is this really an
abomination?

It says that we should not eat shellfish, e.g., crab, lobster, clams, etc. In addition, it says that a man shall not lay with another man.

God's Word says it is an abomination
to let this man in your church. Yet,
churches wink at this Law.

If the book of Leviticus says that these things are an abomination, then how can members of the church wear cottons and linens while eating clam chowder and bread for lunch?

Why are the wheel-chaired people allowed inside the church? Why do their husbands shave their faces?

The constitution gets abused when
states pass anti-gay amendments.
We The People...unless your gay

If it is the Word of God, then I would expect 33 states to pass Constitutional amendments forbidding shaving and tattoo's...because these things are against the Word of God. If laying with another man is wrong, then these other things MUST ALSO BE EQUALLY wrong. Alternatively, is it possible, that none of them are relevant anymore? I think that we cannot select one item, homosexuality, and ignore the others. What has happened is that the church has picked out this one verse about homosexuality and then they stand tall with pride and claim, "Well, the Bible says it and I believe it. It is the Word of God."

This woman is obeying the Bible.
After all, it is God's Word.
Hats are fun.

Paul said that the women should cover their heads and remain silent in the Church. Many preachers have taught that it is not culturally relevant and point to many examples of women's roles throughout the Bible. True that. Yet, Paul said what he said; therefore is it not then "the Word of God?" It seems convenient that the Church ignores Paul's writing when it comes to women. However, it is completely another matter when Paul said that homosexuals would not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. If the church can explain away the problem of women speaking in the church, then let us take a deeper look at the word homosexual found in Corinthians. In the original Greek, the word homosexual translated means "male prostitute in the Temple." I think it has something to do with defiling the Temple more than a statement against gay people. I do not think Paul was campaigning against gay men in general.

The Bible says that a man should marry instead of burning with lust. In America, 33 states have constitutional amendments that forbid marriage of homosexuals. They are forced to choose celibacy, or, fornicate. When homosexuals have sex, it is called sodomy and that too has been legislated against the law. It hurts everyone when leaders such as Jimmy Swaggart condemn gay people while he at the same time he has admitted to paying prostitutes.

Lets be clear: Gay marriage
does not lead to goat weddings

Therefore, the Church helps to pass a law forbidding marriage and then the Church complains that gay people are fornicators. When gay sexuality is criminalized, then which way should a gay person turn? James Dobson and Focus on the Family are notorious for stirring up fear by saying that gays molest children, they have rampant sex in public and they are going to ruin marriage for everyone. They think that the door will open to animals getting married. That is absurd. We are talking about human beings not animals. Dobson said that the United States was facing God's wrath of judgment because of the acceptance of gay people in society. Pat Robertson has blamed earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis on gay people. As of this year, 2011, it is still against the law in Kansas for gays to have mutual sex. In this type of environment grew a deep closeted and dysfunctional gay community that behaved in abnormal ways. However, as acceptance of gays has increased in America, normal behavior has increased. I have not seen the public display of sexual acts as described by ministers such as noted previously.Abnormal behavior will occur when normal behavior is criminalized and condemned as abnormal. Nevertheless, those days are mostly long gone and are no more aberrant than straight people behaviors. What we do see is great Christian leaders preaching against gay people and then it turns out that they are gay. Read this story on so-called Bishop Eddie Long.

Jesus was asked what the most important law is. He said to love

Today's evangelical pastors
use marketing and persuasion
to sell the idea that God is a
God of blessings; provided you
believe what the church teaches.

God and one another. All of the Law is can be wrapped up in treating your neighbor as yourself. This is not really just a good suggestion. It is the entire mandate and marching orders for Christians to embrace and weave into their thinking, their behavior, their actions and their words. Churches are excluding an entire group of children when they campaign against gays. Do laws passed against gay people promote an environment of love and caring? I think not.

I agree with C.S. Lewis when he said that the homosexual has a cross to bear and that this cross might become the basis of his vocation or ministries. In any type of persecuted group of people, there often emerges works that are classical and offer great insights through art, writings and works of love. Surely, it is the condemnation of homosexuality that drove me to seek God. Moreover, in that process I discovered that God has loved me the whole time and never judged me. I judged myself and I let others judge me; but God has never judged me for being a homosexual. I am bound by the same laws of morality as anyone else; except that my behavior is criminalized by society. It is this cross-to-bear that forced me to understand God's Word when it came to the so-called condemning verses of the Bible that are used against me and against an entire class of God's children.

If you cherry pick the Scriptures,
then the Bible says this Clam Chowder
is an abomination to the Lord

If the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, then these verses are powerful. How does a good Christian go against the Bible? It feels like a huge sin to ignore these passages. Yet, we IGNORE the other passages with relative ease when it comes to shaving, tattoos and letting the lame inside our churches. How do we do that? How can accept that clam chowder is OK and shaving is all right even if the Word of God says it is an abomination? To quote the preachers, the Word is the Word.

So, is it really that huge of a

God said he loves all of us.
If God said ALL, He means ALL.

leap-of-faith to suggest that maybe homosexuality is in the same category as not eating shellfish, shaving, letting women have roles in the church, wearing cotton and linen while also letting the handicapped come to church? It may be that homosexuality is not culturally relevant anymore.

The Laws of Leviticus are no longer applied to people of faith

There is a way out of this dilemma. Jesus said that he did not come to enforce the Law, he came to replace it. The Law cannot save us. Then why do good people insist on grabbing these verses and ignoring the others? The Law is done away with: that includes the verses about a man laying with another man. That includes the abomination of shaving. That includes allowing handicapped people into our churches. We are saved by faith in Christ -and not by our works. The Law is works. The Bible says that if we try to walk by the Law, then we must obey EVERY single law. We do not obey the old Law because we know that Christ came to abolish the imperfect Law with the perfect sacrifice. How big a leap is it then, to suggest that God is OK with gay people?

God loves a person whose heart
is in the right place

My grandmother said that she felt gays had no choice in their sexuality and that they had to be born that way. She said that we should treat the gays with decency because... well, because gays are people too. In my view of the Bible, God Loves ALL. He saves those who turn to Him and He loves a contrite and repentant heart. Gays also have a contrite heart for God and He loves them.

Gay people are not an abomination anymore. Neither are the handicapped, the tatted, the poor, the widow or the stranger.

3 comments:

Just a thot on your blog from your comment on Mar 10 regarding Biblical view of gay lifestyle...

Broadly speaking, (and I emphasize the "broadly!") commandments given under the Older Testament that are not repeated in the New Testament were for specific ceremonial or situational purposes that do not apply to the New Testament believer. In some cases a general principle may remain, but the specific command could only be applied under the direct supervision of God over His people Israel.

You brought up the prohibition of the planting or weaving of two different seeds/fabrics together. When God brought His people into the Promised Land it was inhabited by people who were violent, sexually perverse, and superstitious--the Canaanites. These people believed in the superstitious idea that by combining anything and everything together in a "sexual union"--animate and inanimate--that you could yield better productivity. The key to everything was fertility rites and rituals. Two different seeds "mating" would produce bigger and better crops. Two different kinds of fabric united would produce a better garment etc.

God did not want His people to participate in the superstitious and sexually perverse rites and rituals of the Canaanites. If His people were fruitful it would not be because of some magic or technique of their own, but because of His blessing upon them.

I suppose a general principle could be extracted from this: A culture must not be "sexualized" believing that sexuality exists for purposes other than that given by God. Or perhaps we could even go further and say that the very concept of sexual union as planned by God is ultimately only fruitful and not harmful when practiced under the conditions and by the people to whom it was given--one man and one woman united by God in marriage.

Homosexuals and lesbians can never be fruitful in their relationships. The attempt to justify behaviors by suggesting that ancient laws and prohibitions no longer observed should include their unnatural sexual practices. This will not work for many reasons, not the least of which is that there are several prohibitions of homosexual activity in the New Testament.